We characterize Nash equilibria of games with a continuum of players (Mas-Colell (1984)) in terms of approximate equilibria of large finite games. For the concept of ("; ") equilibrium in which the fraction of players not " optimizing is less than " we show that a strategy is a Nash equilibrium in a game with a continuum of players if and only if there exists a sequence of finite games such that its restriction is an ("n; "n) equilibria, with "n converging to zero. The same holds for " equilibrium in which almost all players are " optimizing provided that either players payoff functions are equicontinuous or players action space is finite. Furthermore, we give conditions under which the above results hold for all approximating sequences of games. In our characterizations, a sequence of finite games approaches the continuum game in the sense that the number of players converges to infinity and the distribution of characteristics and actions in the finite games converges to that of the continuum game. These results render approximate equilibria of large finite economies as an alternative way of obtaining strategic insignificance.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Economia in its series FEUNL Working Paper Series with number
wp466.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)